Cache management procedures are conventionally performed in mobile communications networks in order to cope with latencies in the presentation of content to mobile users which may occur due to limited network transmission resources. A cache is provided in a mobile terminal, e.g. mobile phone, smart phone, PDA, notebook, or similar terminal device adapted for connection with a mobile communications network. Particular content data items, which may be requested for presentation on the terminal, are downloaded to the cache. Such data items may for example comprise product offers or news such as political or sports information, etc. In case a downloaded data item is actually requested for presentation on the terminal, the item is already available in the cache and can be presented without delay. This download in advance is generally termed ‘pre-fetching’.
As eventually any cache is limited in storage, cache management requires a decision logic for deciding which data items to pre-fetch into the cache. Some form of automatic determination has to be performed, which data items from a possibly large set of items are most likely to be queried by the user of the mobile terminal. For example, in a shopping environment the complete set of items may represent all the products of a shop or retailer. A simple determination routine may comprise to pre-fetch those data items related to products bought earlier by the user, which is useful in case the user can be assumed to regularly buy the same products again, e.g. in a supermarket environment. Pre-fetching data items which are most relevant for the user of the mobile terminal not only minimizes latency in the content presentation, but also contributes to minimizing storage resources required for the caching.
Although various procedures for determining data items for pre-fetching are known, the miss rate thereof is generally high, i.e., for example in an advertisement provisioning system many items pre-fetched into a cache may never be requested by the user, which leads to a waste of transmission resources in the network and storage resources in the terminal.